I've been meaning to write this for some time, and for all the time I delayed the more poignant the point I wanted to make started to become as new news came out further solidifying my angle. When I begun writing this article the iPad had not yet been revealed, iPhone OS 4 was not on the map and Apple had not yet purchased Lala. You've probably just noticed that all of these events in fact point toward Apple embracing the web more and in this article I will point out why this is not the case because I believe Apple's agenda here is similar to something we've already seen in recent history.

webkit from apple is the only rendering engine on apple's mobile devices hence apple is in absolute control over what web technologies will be supported on their devices and they have a potential here to be where microsoft was with IE6.

But apple business model does not scale and iphone/ipad will most likely never dominant enough to command the web to be tuned to its features and bugs.

It is fairly easy to give examples of where IE6 domination hindered the web Can you show of example of where h.264 did the same? h.264 concerns only those who are starting to be too big to matter or to those concerned with free software philosophies.

Most FOSS audio/video players can encode and decode the codec and most online contents are served through flash.

Most if not all practical problems about h.264 on the web will be solved by VP8.Hardware support of the codec will start rolling soon, all major browser will support it, flash, too will support it

Apple just accelerated the push towards html5, i doubt they will have the muscle to corner the html5 world to their liking, chrome is there to make sure that wont happen

I simply dont have a concern about the web anymore. Nobody will be able to will the web to their liking anymore and there are too many players and this will only force the web to gravitate towards the least common denominator, ie standard bugs, behaviors and expectations.

Apple's business model is based on getting the biggest slice of the revenue pie in any market. That's been completely successful, and scaled well, in laptops, mobile phones, music players and (now) tablets. And it's the biggest music retailer in America.